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Kantar Media Newsroom: Can You Believe it’s Time for Cannes?

Welcome to this week’s Kantar Media Newsroom, your weekly summary of the news that matters in the media and marketing industries. To learn more about how we can help you monitor both paid and earned media and make informed decisions, please contact us at info-us@kantarmedia.com.

Can You Believe it’s Already Cannes?

Tripping over Twitter ads

Twitter and its in-house creative team decided to buy up anything that would stand still at this week’s Cannes festival. Using a World Cup theme, “The campaign leans on Twitter's ‘What's Happening’ tagline, which the company has used in marketing for two years, a nod to its role in the daily cultural conversation. Twitter also plans to use Cannes as a showcase for design changes it just made to the platform. This week, Twitter revealed updates to the user experience that are meant to help people find tweets and videos that are most relevant to them.” To say that social media platforms, including Twitter, have had a rough go of it for the last year is an understatement, but Twitter itself has been able to make a statement at Cannes after winning a grand Prix for an outdoor campaign last year. “This year, Twitter is coming to Cannes on more confident footing than it has been in years past; the company is riding on growing momentum in its ad business. In the first quarter, Twitter's ad revenue rose 21 percent year-over-year to $575 million, and the company was profitable for the second consecutive quarter with net income of $61 million. What a difference a year makes: During the same period from 2017, Twitter's ad revenue dropped 11 percent year-over-year, and the company posted a net loss of $62 million.”

Ogilvy’s 20 by 2020

Ahhh numbers. We love to confuse with numbers. Fortunately in this case, it is great news for female creatives throughout the globe, as Ogilvy has pledged to hire 20 women for senior creative roles worldwide. Tham Khai Meng – Ogilvy’s CCO made the announcement at Cannes, linking the agency with the 3% Movement, started by Kat Gordon. Khai stated, “’obviously this is the right thing for us to do, but it also makes business sense. Diversity will improve the work. But the trick is to hire the right senior creative women. Our industry is so competitive; the women themselves have to be great.’” In case you haven’t heard of the mission, “Gordon founded the 3% Conference in the US in 2012. The name was inspired by the then fact that just 3% of creative directors were women and the 3% Movement's mission is to bring that number up to 50%.”

Lost your Cannes invite in the mail?

Attendance may be down at this year’s creative festival, but fear not, you can still experience all the wonder and amazement with Cannesfaker, a tool that provides all the content you’d need to show that you were there, even if you weren’t. But wait, what’s that? It’s a fake out! Users get redirected to Lifefaker.com, a promotion for Sanctus, supposedly “the world’s first mental health gym.” This is all connected to the “reality” that social media posts and the perceptions they create can lead to mental health issues. Sanctus founder James Routledge wrote, “’Whilst it’s unfair to blame social media completely for poor mental health, there’s a clear link and we only need to look inwards to know there have likely been times when we’ve either been mindlessly scrolling, we’ve felt ourselves comparing ourselves to others or a social media post has triggered something for us.’”

The Power of Social Media

Viral Facebook fundraiser seeks to put together what the government has torn apart

Regardless of your political leaning, the separations taking place at our nation’s border – parents from babies and children, even when seeking asylum – have been heart-wrenching to watch and hear about in the news. One couple in California was so impacted by an image of a toddler crying for her parents that they decided to take action, setting up a Facebook fundraiser to get the $1,500 bond needed to get one of her parents out of detention. Since that first fundraiser was started, roughly $4,000 per minute has poured in to help reconnect these immigrant families. All through Facebook and other social media platforms. Amazing. “The couple chose to raise money for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a nonprofit located in Texas that offers free and low-cost legal services to immigrants and refugees. The original goal of $1,500 was the minimum amount to cover bond fees for one person, according to RAICES. By Tuesday morning, the campaign surpassed $4 million, with more than 96,000 people donating. Its new goal is $5 million.”

You can’t buy me love…or followers

Unilever is back in the spotlight, with its CMO Keith Weed declaring the company will no longer connect with social media influencers if they buy followers. “Influencer marketing, the practice that involves paying people with large social-media followings to promote a product or service, has been growing in importance over the past few years as brands flocked to the practice to help them harness the popularity of social-media platforms. However, the sector has lost some of its sheen after numerous reports surfaced about fraud that exist in the business from influencers that buy followers to influencers using bots to make it look as if there are more people engaging with their posts.” Weed has had enough and is calling on social media platforms to do a better job policing the issue. “Despite the problems, advertisers are still enamored with the marketing technique. A survey of 158 marketers conducted late last year for the Association of National Advertisers found that 75% of those polled use influencer marketing and almost half of them planned to increase their spending on the practice over the next year.”

In Other News

Uber looks to use AI to spot drunken passengers

As if it wasn’t hard enough to get a cab in the city this late at night, Uber is looking for protections to its drivers and other Uber Pool passengers by singling out the drunken buffoons who need to get home after $1 you-call-it night. “The new technology would allow the firm to spot uncharacteristic user behavior by monitoring changes to a customer's walking speed, user typos, and swaying motions, the angles at which the phone is held, and whether or not the phone is swaying, according to the patent application from the company.” So, if you’re either completely uncoordinated or completely inebriated, you might be hard pressed to find a ride home. If this is instituted, Uber might be faced with increased scrutiny over privacy issues, misuse and other data collection concerns.

Hi Marketing, meet IT

Integration is key to improving the bottom line – especially when it involves marketing, IT or data teams as well as areas including operations, legal and finance. Who would have thought that “working together” was the best way to get work done? [Rhetorical question of the day] “Research released Monday by consultancy McKinsey showed that companies whose chief marketing officers (CMOs) are ‘integrators,’ working with their colleagues in IT to reach company goals, are more successful that those who don't work together. McKinsey surveyed 200 chief marketing officers for its report and tracked the financial performance of their companies. Marketing is most often seen as a cost on a company's balance sheet, but working with IT or data teams can help track the effectiveness of advertising and other types of promotion. Data analytics can improve marketing as it ‘can uncover customer intentions, triggers, and interests that reveal subtle pain points and unmet needs.’”

Kantar Media’s Dimension 2018 is out!

DIMENSION 2018 explores four of the largest issues facing the media industry from improving creative standards and relevance online and achieving greater channel integration. Explore and download here!

Who's on Top? June 4 - June 10, 2018

Walmart expands its footprint in the digital grocery games

National TV ad spend saw a small increase of 4% during the week of June 4th, reaching a total of $950 million. Spend on new advertising also rose, reaching $149 million – an increase of 20% week over week.

All of Walmart’s new ad budget for the week went to three new TV spots promoting their grocery pick up service, a space that has become a critical battleground for retailers. Each commercial shows Walmart customers conveniently ordering groceries through the retailer’s app, while personal shopper’s in-store do the leg work. All the customer has to do is relax, roll up to the curb and enjoy their food.